Sounds like they're turning that ship around then. The show also promises to have Sif in an episode and Bill Paxton is (maybe?) joining the cast. That's enough to keep me from "Completely Disinterested" status to "Will Pay Attention for Others Saying It's Good".

The original article got its headline and then decided to wait until the last sentence to mention that he immediately backpedaled.

"I guess I don’t mean to say that people who have been frustrated by that discovery period are necessarily losers," he said. "I just think they should be, perhaps, a little more patient."

That said, I'm with Hughes:

No less an authority than Jim Steranko, whose seminal work on Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD for Marvel in the ’70s has informed every iteration of the agency since, has been extremely critical of the series to date in his write-ups for The Hollywood Reporter, saying the plots “defy logic.” Asked about Steranko’s opinion, Gregg reportedly said, perhaps jokingly, that Steranko should “make his own show.” In discussing it, we at ComicsAlliance feel that a more appropriate response would have been:

“Thank you, Mr. Steranko, for creating work that ultimately led to me having what is easily the biggest gig in my acting career. My kids really appreciate all this new money. My new house has five bathrooms. You’re the best.”

You know, something like that.

There is something charming about Gregg busting out with a knee-jerk defensive fanboy response -- exactly the sort of thing Coulson would do. Movie Coulson who has Captain America trading cards, not TV Coulson.

I mean, really, it's such a fanboy thing to say. If I had a nickel for every time I saw a comments section where someone said they were dropping a book because it wasn't very good and somebody else responded with "It's only been two issues! You haven't even given it a chance yet!" Like somehow we are obligated to throw down three to four bucks a month for a comic because hey, it's probably going to stop sucking sooner or later, right?

(In their defense, I spent most of the 1990's continuing to pay for books that sucked in the hopes that they would stop sucking sooner or later.)

Course, SHIELD at least does not actually cost three to four bucks a month to watch. So it's got that going for it.

I stuck with this for one more episode (the train one) and it was irritatingly good. I'm wholly ready to jump ship on this thing altogether, but I'll give it another episode or two. If they pull anything like that Thor tie-in garbage again holy shit I am done.

So, I was out getting some ice last night, and my sisters were watching this show. I didn't wanna just get the ice right then, because how rude would it be to raise a racket while they were watching their show? So I sat down and waited 'til the next commercial break. The actions scene that was going on was pretty okay, I mean it was a little languid, even cutting between three (?) different viewpoints, but hey what did you expect for the first half of the episode?

I haven't seen this week's yet but I think last week's was the best to date. Which, you know, means it's finally risen to the level of "boring bullshit", but still, Paxton really DID seem to turn it around.

Really there were only two major problems:

1. I legitimately do not give a fuck whether Skye or anybody else on this show lives or dies;2. They expect me to root for somebody who beats the hell out of an unarmed prisoner.

But as far as the finale, as far as picking wider Marvel mythology that hasn't made it into the movies (as far as I know; I haven't seen Thor 2) but is perfectly serviceable for a TV show, it was...well, pretty much where the show should have been in episode one, but better late than never.

Thad wrote:1. I legitimately do not give a fuck whether Skye or anybody else on this show lives or dies;

I'm with you there. I'm almost hoping the pilot gets killed so something dramatically interesting comes of her.

I get the unfortunate feeling that next week's HEY REMEMBER THIS CHARACTER FROM MARVEL'S THOR 2: THE DARK WORLD SHE'LL BE GUEST STARRING NEXT WEEK ALSO CATCH A PREVIEW FOR THE AVENGERS 2 IN THEATERS JULY 13TH episode is going to be where I drop the show entirely.

Yeah, just watched the Sif one and damn, what a good premise completely wasted.

Full-on Idiot Plot; Sif tells them that the Enchantress can control men so of course they send in the most highly-trained male assassin on the team because everybody on this show is fucking stupid. Was there an earlier draft without Sif delivering exposition right before they went in? Because that would have actually made sense.

Thad wrote:Granted, coconut like this IS absolutely true to Marvel canon.

I always thought that the point of TV versions (or any reboot, really) was to make sift the cream from the whey and polish off the idiot turds that come up when comics get put in the hands of people who really do not belong storytelling.

I know they don't always succeed, but I've felt like the shows and versions I've liked best were the ones that eliminated extraneous or problematic nonsense from the canon.

Yeah, I see what you mean. I'd say Batman: TAS and Spectacular Spider-Man are the platonic forms of their respective worlds, with all the good stuff kept and all the crap jettisoned.

Prime time live-action shows don't really have the same expectations or freedom that cartoons do. Sometimes they work, sometimes they're a mess. Smallville is the logical conclusion of what you get when you try to condense 70 years of Superman history without actually having Superman in it.

And SHIELD is really its own animal, trying to have it both ways by tying in to the Marvel film universe but existing separately from it aside from Coulson and an occasional guest star. I can't really think of any other examples that are directly comparable.

But that's not what's wrong with it. Heroes was a TV superhero show and -- for the first season, anyway -- was a fuck of a lot better than SHIELD.

And then there's Arrow, which is by no means a perfect show but is still superior to SHIELD in pretty much every way. This initially surprised me, but in hindsight it makes a lot of sense -- DC's just got more practice. DC has had at least one successful prime-time superhero TV show per decade for as long as there's been TV. Marvel has had a total of two, ever -- and that's if you count Mutant X.